Hordes of Country Music Fans Admitting Weakness, Even in Ivy League

On the dance floor at Boppers nightclub sits the sawed-off front end of a 1956 Buick, around which dancing waitresses usually strut their stuff to Elvis, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

But on this night, the car can barely be seen through the crowd of urban cowboys wearing Stetson hats, cowboy boots, oversized belt buckles and faded jeans.

In this onetime bastion of rock ‘n’ roll, country music is suddenly cool.

The club’s weekly transformation into a country and western dance hall reflects the growing popularity of country music across the nation, especially in the Northeast, where not too long ago admitting you liked country music was like admitting your favorite sport is professional wrestling.

Now, on a typical Wednesday night, 200 to 300 people from Connecticut and New York suburbs make their way to Boppers to listen to the Nashville sound and learn the latest country dances.

There are secretaries, truck drivers and plumbers here. But there are also accountants, lawyers and corporate executives who leave their business suits at work and put on their best pair of jeans to kick up their heels to Garth Brooks, Alan Jackson or Billy Ray Cyrus.

“Most of the people I know who like it say it’s the only music they can listen to and understand the words,” said Christine Marchell, a 39-year-old New York financial analyst who sipped white wine as she listened to a country band called Little Texas.

“As soon as I admitted I liked country music, I was amazed at the number of people who said they liked it too,” Marchell said.

Once anathema among baby boomers weaned on rock ‘n’ roll, country is becoming the music of choice for many members of the Woodstock generation.

Sales of country albums in the United States have more than doubled in the past four years, going from $425 million in 1988 to more than $979 million in 1991.

Although rock still dominates the music industry with just over 36% of total sales, the most significant growth over the last two years has been in country music, which has jumped to 12.5% of total sales.

Last year, Garth Brooks made music history when his “Ropin’ The Wind” album sold 5 million copies within three months of its release. The album debuted in the No. 1 slot on Billboard’s Top 200 Album Chart, a first for a country artist.

And so far this year, 46 country albums have gone gold, platinum and multiplatinum, each selling between 500,000 and 2 million copies or more.

So why has country suddenly become hip, even in the staid Northeast, where country still evokes images of pickup trucks, Hee Haw and standin’ by your man?

“The songs aren’t about truck drivers anymore. They’re not tear-in-your-beer songs. They’re not cowboy songs. They’re just songs about life,” said Johnny Michaels, program director at WYNY-FM in New York, a station that switched from adult contemporary music to country in 1987 and now has an audience of more than 1 million in New York, Connecticut and New Jersey.

The phenomenal popularity of country music cannot be explained through record sales alone.

Videos also have helped country move into the mainstream. The number of country videos has exploded to about 2,700, from a library of just 120 in 1983, when The Nashville Network and Country Music Television premiered on cable. Today, TNN has about 58 million subscribers, while CMT reaches about 17 million households.

Since 1980, the number of radio stations with country music formats has grown from about 1,500 to nearly 2,500 nationwide.

Country stations are No. 1 in cities as diverse as Seattle, Chicago, Dallas, Phoenix, Kansas City, Orlando, Fla., Buffalo, N.Y., and Bakersfield, Calif.

Another obvious sign of country’s new popularity is the number of nightclubs that have quietly transformed themselves into country music dance halls. Here, would-be cowboys pull up in BMWs and Volvos to dance the Achy Breaky (Heart), the Tush Push or the Texas two-step.

“You get a lot of people coming in with their business suits one week and then the next week you’ll see the same guy coming in, but he’ll be wearing a cowboy hat and boots,” said Todd Kunesh, who last November converted The Hop, a rock ‘n’ roll nostalgia club in Riverside, Calif., into the Riverside Cowboy.

The Riverside, one of an estimated 1,200 country music dance clubs in the nation, now draws nightly crowds of between 500 and 1,200 people, ranging in age from 21 to 81, Kunesh said.

The crowds are even bigger at Do Da’s Country Dance Hall Saloon in Buffalo, N.Y., where 1,300 or more cram onto a 2,000-square-foot oak dance floor every night for free country and western dance lessons.

“It’s really hot. They can’t all fit on the dance floor so they’re dancing in the aisles,” said James DiBlas, who built the club for his daughter.

Many attribute country’s resurgence to a new breed of young artists who have changed the image of country over the last five years.

Artists such as Clint Black, Vince Gill, Travis Tritt and others have drawn millions of young listeners by fusing rock and folk with traditional country for a sound that is often called “new country.”

“Now the younger artists that are coming out are 20 or 25 years old, so a lot of people who are in that age group can relate to them. And they can certainly relate more to Clint Black than Michael Jackson,” said John Saville, music director at Hartford radio station WWYZ-FM, the highest-rated station in its market for the age group 25-54.

If anyone epitomizes the crossover appeal of this new wave of country singers, it is Garth Brooks, an Oklahoman whose three albums have sold more than 20 million copies and sat at the top of the charts for most of the last three years.

Brooks’ romping, guitar-smashing stage antics are reminiscent of The Who, one of rock’s most enduring groups. But Brooks sings about problems of everyday life in songs that appeal to baby boomers grappling with midlife and all its dreams and disappointments.

Behind Brooks is a long list of country singers who have managed to draw the MTV generation to country music.